Nietzsche Society poster uses racist imagery

While students have traditionally been very good at challenging the presence of the far-right on their campuses, Student Rights has continued to document racist or fascist activity.

We have reported on attempts at campus infiltration by the neo-Nazi group National Action, and attempts to set up British National Party front groups by party activists.

This week, Student Rights has been informed that material promoting the Nietzsche Club is once again being distributed at University College London (UCL).

The society caused controversy last year after producing incendiary leaflets declaring that “Equality is a false God” and encouraging students to discuss “traditionalist culture and philosophy”.

As a result UCL’s Student Union condemned the society for promoting a “far-right, fascist ideology” and banned the group, a position that was subsequently reversed due to “insufficient evidence”.

On Monday however, Student Rights saw a new poster advertising the group, which used racist imagery and promoted controversial philosophers, including the anti-Semitic writer Julius Evola.

A major influence on Italian fascism, Evolabelieved that Jews "lay behind the main sources of the perversion of western civilisation", and wrote that they sought "to destroy every surviving trace of true order and superior civilisation”.

While it is important that our universities are places in which radical ideas can be studied and discussed, this use of overtly racist images must not go unchallenged by UCL.

Previous attempts to close down the group were flawed as those behind it appear to have been deeply partisan, and to have made no effort to present any evidence other than hearsay.

However, in this case the use of racist material must be punished through UCL’s disciplinary processes – and it should be made clear that societies which use such material will face effective sanctions.

On 5 March 2018, the King’s College Libertarian Society attempted to host an event featuring Israeli speaker Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute and controversial YouTube vlogger ‘Sargon of Akkad’ (Carl Benjamin). Both speakers were due to talk about freedom of expression as well as ‘objectivism’, the libertarian philosophy created by Russian-American author Ayn Rand. The protest group set up on Facebook called for the speakers to be no-platformed and described them as ‘white supremacists’, ‘neo-fascists’, ‘nazis’ and ‘alt-right’. Off-campus groups, including black-clad activists from the hardline “left-wing, anti-fascist” street movement Antifa, were also present. Unlike the student societies, Antifa violently shut down the event and forced it to be cancelled. The organisers of the event faced other institutional obstacles. The appalling scenes at KCL last night are evidence of an encroaching culture of intolerance and hostility towards free speech on university campuses in Britain.

On Monday 12 February, former Israeli Deputy Prime Minister and Likud Party politician Dan Meridor gave a speech entitled ‘Threats and Challenges’ to students at the Strand Campus of King’s College London (KCL). This event, which was jointly organised by The Pinsker Centre and the KCL and City University Israel Societies, was met with vocal protests by students and activists affiliated to anti-Israel groups. Video footage shows how a crowd of around sixty protestors waved placards and sought to disrupt the event by screaming loudly outside the entrance to the lecture room where Meridor was speaking. Some protestors were reported to have photographed members of the audience leaving the room. The Union of Jewish Students (UJS) condemned what it called “disgraceful scenes”, and the President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews claimed that he would be in contact with the Principal of KCL to “gain assurances that there will be no repeat”. We hope that KCL can fully ensure that future speakers, Israeli or otherwise, are not subject to similar attempts at disruption in future, nor their audience subject to unacceptable levels of hostility and intimidation.

In the lead up to Holocaust Memorial Day 2018, the UK government has announced that it will partner with the Union of Jewish Students (UJS) and the Holocaust Education Trust (HET) in sending 200 university students from across the UK to Auschwitz-Birkenau, the former Nazi extermination camp in Poland. The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and the Department for Education have pledged to devote £144,000 to the project. They aim to train participants so that they can educate fellow students about anti-Semitism when they return to UK campuses. Student Rights is extremely supportive of the government’s decision to support students in this way. We hope it has a tangible impact at all levels of student life across the UK.